Topic: Chumby, as alarm

I've had a Chumby Classic for ... well, I can't remember, quite a few years, now. It's always lived on my desk next to my computer screen, and been quite happy there, telling me the time and the like.

Recently, our radio alarm that has lived on my bedside table since before even the Chumby took up residence, stopped working properly.

I bought a new clock radio. Neat little Sony thing, nice big snooze button (vital, I promise!) but its FM radio reception was unreliable and sometimes the alarm would go off silently. Not Useful.

So I have bought a range extender to make the wifi in the bedroom a little more robust and the Chumby has taken up residence.

I'm using the built-in alarm clock, set to play an internet feed of our preferred morning radio station, with the option to start beeping if nobody's responded to the alarm for 5 minutes.

So far so noncontroversial. It's been working fine for about three weeks, now.

However, a couple of times the alarm's been switched off (as opposed to snoozed) which flips the Chumby back to the Clocks channel from night mode, and 5 minutes later it's started beeping. It's usually a while before I notice that because by that time I'm downstairs feeding the cats, so it might be beeping for a few minutes.

And when I get to the Chumby to shut it up, a tap on the screen or the big button on top results in the screen just going dark. The beeping stops, but so does everything else.

I appreciate I probably can't do anything to change the behaviour of the inbuilt alarm clock and I may just have to live with it. However, does anyone have any suggestions for something I might do that provides similar functionality but that's less inclined to annoy the neighbours and then crash? wink

Re: Chumby, as alarm

Strange behavior. Just touching the screen doesn't turn off the alarm before it goes off. There is a way to turn off the next scheduled alarm without turning off the continued alarm settings. If the night mode is on when you touch the screen, depending on where you touch, you can put into a darker or black mode. Can you get the screen back up without restarting? Can you check to see if there is a loose connection for the power supply? Move the Chumby and/or the power cable while in normal mode to see if there is a loose connection. I had that happen with a C8. If Chumby is working properly it is a reliable alarm clock.
I usually set the night mode to come on and off for bedtime and set continuous alarms for each morning. I rarely have had problems especially not as you have described.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.

Re: Chumby, as alarm

I'd agree with demarks51. I haven't seen this behaviour either - something unusual is going on with your Chumby. It doesn't sound like the normal behaviour of the inbuilt alarm clock at all.
When you say the alarm has been switched off - where did you switch it off? Was this after it started sounding, or did you use the Skip feature (which I have found to be less than 100% reliable)?
What's the screen saying whilst the Chumby is beeping? I have a faint recollection from about five years ago that my Chumby used to beep if the wireless signal dropped out whilst it was playing internet radio.